The Goodson Blogson

Statutes and regulations and case law, oh my! There are so many places to find federal legal sources that it can feel overwhelming at the start of a research project. If you've been relying on Law School-only tools like Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law, you might not know where to begin when you no longer have access to your favorite research service. Fortunately, the Goodson Law Library can help with our Federal Law Links list, which provides alternative (and often free) web access to the current and historical U.S. Code , federal legislative history documents, federal court opinions, and agency/executive resources. For items published after the mid-1990s, the U.S. Government Publishing Office's govinfo , currently in beta, is a great place to start. This site will eventually replace FDsys as the federal government’s official online repository; note that both sites currently offer the same content, but govinfo does not yet include browsing capability for certain collecti...

The Goodson Law Library has added a few new legislative history search options to its collection of electronic resources. ProQuest Congressional now contains the library of Digital U.S. Bills and Resolutions, 1789-2013 . This module includes the full text of all federal bills and resolutions since the 1st Congress, including PDF images of handwritten early bills (see example below). An Act Making an Alteration in the Flag of the United States (1789). Senate bill from 1st Congress; accessed in ProQuest Congressional. Use the "Bills & Laws" search option, or choose "Legislative & Executive Publications > Search by number" to retrieve known citations. Results include a "Bill profile" which compiles information about the bill's progress within Congress and subsequent or variant versions. This resource will be particularly valuable for researchers working with bills related to unenacted laws, since many full-text legislative history re...

When Grammy and Academy Award-winning musician Prince (née Prince Rogers Nelson) passed away last week at age 57, his fans around the world were shocked at the sudden loss. This week, it was alleged in court filings that the famed entertainer died without preparing a will – this time, sending a shock through the legal community. Prince's estate is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions , including his lucrative songwriting catalog (which Prince controlled after decades of legal wrangling with record labels). Prince was unmarried and had no living parents or children (his only son, with ex-wife Mayte Garcia, died shortly after his 1996 birth). Tyka Nelson, Prince's sister, has petitioned a Minnesota court for control of the entertainer's estate. (Prince also has five half-siblings, which the ABA Journal notes are treated as full siblings under Minnesota probate law.) While it's surprising that Prince would die intestate after a career marked by legal battles over ...

On Thursday, three nonprofit groups filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The complaint , which is available free from the Alliance for Justice website and the Internet Archive , alleges that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts charges excessive fees to access federal court filings on its PACER service (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). The Wall Street Journal Law Blog and ABA Journal have helpful write-ups of the case background. As legal researchers know, PACER.gov is the official source for federal court filings, and is currently used in all federal jurisdictions except the U.S. Supreme Court (which announced in its 2014 Year-End Report of the Chief Justice that it is developing its own electronic alternative for filings). PACER requires individuals to register an account, along with a credit card for payment of any fees incurred above $15 in a quarterly billing period. Fees in PACER (for both searching and vi...